The Town Of Toys

Wooden toys is what gave identity to this nondescript town located on National Highway 64, around 30 km from Sangrur on the Bathinda road in Punjab. Rows and rows of brightly painted small wooden tractors, trailers, trucks and tankers welcome visitors. People passing by often stop at Dhanaula to shop for these memorabilia of Punjab’s Green Revolution. Then there are the John Deere tractors, the combines, the gasoline trucks, reflecting the rich agricultural land that is Punjab, India’s breadbasket.

For the last 25 years, Balwinder Singh has been selling his handmade wooden tiny trucks and tractors on the roadside, with the real versions rumbling by a few feet away. As business grew, the 52-year-old Singh drew in his family members, employing his brother to cut the wood, his wife to sand and buff, his children to paint, producing an average of five to ten trucks a day. He slowly works on the hand operated saws and sandpapers the miniature wooden trucks in his dimly-lit workshop. The pieces are also not very expensive, with a trailer truck costing Rs 400, a small size truck Rs 90 and a tractor-trailer Rs 140.

For years, he has been selling his diminutive wooden wares along the roadside, carefully arranged in lines, orderly, never honking or cutting each other off, in contrast to the real versions rumbling by a few feet away. Most of his customers see his wares on the roadside and stop for an impulse buy. His best allies are children, who make such a ruckus that parents are forced to turn back. Two kids in the car, even better for him, especially if the parents don’t want to suffer miles of backseat fighting. These city dwellers, nostalgic for a rural India they no longer know, and the occasional truck driver looking for a replica of his own belching truck, form the bulk of his customers.

But for how long will his shop remain? The widening of NH-64 had resulted in a bypass which dodges the town. The road on which the market is located is no longer on the National Highway, but an inner town road. The generations of these toy makers see their livelihood threatened and this little town fears losing its identity. Very similar to what happened to the applique makers of our own Pipili on the Puri highway. With the bypass, nearly all the small shops have closed and a thriving trade, which employed so many was just killed.

The half hour I spent with him, I heard his sad story and the bleak prospects the business holds. Balwinder Singh is a broken man who will soon have to seek a new profession. The dusty little town will very soon lose its tag and livelihood. With travellers no longer being able to stop here and buy the miniature handcrafted rustic wooden toys, 25-odd generations-old shops will soon close. Two dozen households will have to relocate, start new businesses or get jobs to make their ends meet.